Rackspace Extends Its Relationship With CERN openlab to Continue Working on Cloud Federation Project

Bruno Guillaume — Thu, 21 May 2015 08:54:26 +0000

May 20th, 2015
Rackspace and CERN openlab Bring Clouds Around the World Together to Aid Scientific Discovery

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwired) -- 05/20/15 -- Rackspace ® (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, today announced an extension of its contributor agreement with CERN openlab to continue working on creating a reference architecture and operational model for federated cloud services. The successful relationship has already seen Rackspace and CERN develop identity authentication over multiple OpenStack clouds, with the next iteration of the project being to extend this concept to developing standardised templates for OpenStack cloud orchestration. This work is expected to enable customers to spin up an environment across multiple cloud platforms with a single action.

CERN's computing environment is extremely demanding; the CERN Data Centre stores more than 30 petabytes of data per year from the experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and this data is made available in near real-time to physicists around the world via its distributed computing infrastructure. The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid comprises over 170 sites in 41 countries, with 350,000 cores processing 2 million jobs a day.

CERN relies on multiple OpenStack clouds that need to be accessed by thousands of researchers around the world so working in an integrated model using open standard identity federation, templates and service catalogues is essential for open collaboration, and ultimately scientific discovery. For industry partners like Rackspace, being able to test future technology solutions in CERN's extreme computing environment accelerates the development of future technology solutions to real business and IT challenges.

"More companies are now looking to use multiple clouds to effectively serve the range of workloads they run -- blending low-cost, high-performance, enhanced security and optimised environments," says
Giri Fox, Rackspace's Director of Customer Technology Services. "But, we are still seeing the complexity businesses are facing to integrate just one cloud into their business. Federation is an opportunity to re-use that initial integration for future clouds you want to run your business on, making multi-cloud a business benefit choice rather than a business cost one."

"Our CERN openlab mission is to work with industry partners to develop open, standard solutions to the challenges faced by the worldwide LHC community. "These solutions also often play a key role in addressing tomorrow's business challenges," says
Tim Bell, infrastructure manager in the IT department at CERN. "After our work on identity federation with Rackspace, this is a very important step forward. For CERN, being able to move compute workloads around the world is essential for ongoing collaboration and discovery."

The Rackspace and CERN openlab agreement involves building on the previous work to create full multi-cloud open standard orchestration capability, reliant on shared installation images and use of a service catalog to enable the identification of the available cloud resource and the management of virtual machines in remote clouds with a single identity.

Rackspace will continue to fund a full time research fellow at CERN to help with the federation project as well as provide services and remote assistance in design and implementation from Rackspace's product teams. CERN will also be using Rackspace® Public Cloud and OnMetal™ services for testing. The contributions are expected to include Heat orchestration, Glance image, Keystone service catalog and Nova compute projects. Rackspace and CERN expect to demonstrate the federation of Heat orchestration at the 2015 Autumn OpenStack Summit.

Press release on Rackspace website.

Press Release pdf:

Rackspace Investor Relations_Press Release_Rackspace.pdf

Released by:

Rackspace

Rackspace and CERN openlab Collaborate to Deliver “Big Bang” with Hybrid Cloud

Melissa Gaillard — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 13:03:34 +0000

OpenStack Founder Rackspace Joins CERN openlab as a Contributor

SAN ANTONIO, TX –July 1, 2013 – Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the open cloud company, today announced it has entered into a contributor agreement with CERN openlab. During the year-long collaboration, Rackspace will deliver a hybrid cloud solution featuring its public and private clouds powered by OpenStack to help CERN advance its mission by enabling more in-depth research into the origins of the universe.

CERN openlab provides a framework to test and validate cutting-edge information technologies and services in partnership with industry at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The new technology partnership with Rackspace will entail several joint initiatives, focused on creating a reference architecture and operational model for federated cloud services between the Rackspace Private Cloud, Rackspace Public Cloud and CERN’s OpenStack powered clouds.

“This is a landmark moment for Rackspace, as we feel this is an opportunity to take our already mutually beneficial relationship with CERN to new heights,” said Jim Curry, SVP and general manager of Rackspace Private Cloud. “Through ongoing collaboration with CERN openlab, we will broaden the global reach of our hybrid cloud solutions, while simultaneously helping to set the pace of innovation within the field of particle physics.”

CERN physicists and engineers use advanced science and technology daily to further humanity’s understanding of the universe. This includes conducting ground-breaking experiments to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles. By using some of the largest and most powerful particle accelerators in the world, including its Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN produces more than 25 petabytes of data annually. CERN is leveraging OpenStack software to manage the resources across its two data centres that power the LHC and to literally help unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Rackspace previously delivered a solution that would allow CERN to burst workloads into its public cloud. Through the new collaborative agreement, the Rackspace Private Cloud platform will now be deployed onto servers that CERN utilizes for production physics experiments. Rackspace and CERN openlab will test and ensure the seamless federation between private and public cloud platforms to accommodate excess workloads, and to experience the true value of the hybrid cloud.

The expanded relationship consists of certain key elements such as:

Federated Cloud Services based on OpenStack Cloud Technologies – Rackspace will work with CERN openlab to federate CERN’s current managed services into Rackspace’s open public and private cloud environments.
Personnel Support – Rackspace will fund one full-time member of the CERN personnel team, who will help create cloud federation technologies.

“We have just celebrated the 20^th anniversary of CERN’s decision to make its World Wide Web software freely available. We definitely see great value in open source technologies like OpenStack. They foster continuous technological improvements through community contributions, while also giving us the ability to quickly address challenges, such as massive scaling, by leveraging the work of others,” said Tim Bell, infrastructure manager in the IT department at CERN. “We’re excited to partner with Rackspace in the CERN openlab framework, as we look for ways to accelerate our innovation on top of an OpenStack-based hybrid cloud.”

To learn more about how CERN is working with Rackspace to drive scientific innovations, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOfRvZq5T6c

For more information about CERN openlab, visit http://www.cern.ch/openlab

About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace® (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company and founder of OpenStack, the standard open-source operating system for cloud computing. Headquartered in San Antonio, Rackspace delivers its renowned Fanatical Support® to more than 200,000 business customers, from data centers on four continents. Rackspace is a leading provider of hybrid clouds, which enable businesses to run their workloads where they run most effectively — whether on the public cloud, a private cloud, dedicated servers, or a combination of these platforms. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company, and is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Media Contact:

Christina Weaver

210-312-4593

christina.weaver@rackspace.com

Press release on Rackspace website: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/newsarticles/rackspace-and-cern-openlab-co...

Press Release pdf:

RackspacePR01072013.pdf

Released by:

Rackspace

CERN openlab - Rackspace

Rackspace Extends Its Relationship With CERN openlab to Continue Working on Cloud Federation Project

Rackspace and CERN openlab Collaborate to Deliver “Big Bang” with Hybrid Cloud